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| How much does the America's Choice program cost? |
| We will assist
you in identifying funding sources. Contact us for details. |
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| How long have schools been using the America's Choice design? |
| Since 1998. Today there are more than 500 America's Choice schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia. We are one of the largest and fastest-growing comprehensive school reform providers in the country. |
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| How do you differ from school management companies like Edison Schools, Inc.? |
| We are a non-profit organization and we do not run schools. Rather, we help schools implement the America's Choice School Design. We also work with school systems and states to strengthen their capacity to implement the design. |
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| What is the evidence of the America's Choice School Design's success? |
| The best evidence comes from external evaluations of the program. In a study of student achievement in Rochester, N.Y., Plainfield, N.J., and Duval County, Fla., for example, research
ers from the highly regarded Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), located at the University of Pennsylvania, found that America's Choice students posted significantly greater gains on state accountability tests than other students. In Duval
County, the reading, writing and language arts scores of America's Choice students rose an average of 81%, compared to 18% among in the district's other schools. |
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| What obligations does our school have once it signs up with the America's Choice program? |
| All America's Choice schools must be committed to re-designing their school and providing the tools and resources necessary for such an undertaking. This includes the release of staff for leadership roles and professional development,
as well as the purchase of certain materials such as the level texts needed in our literacy programs or the New Standards® Reference Exams (available through a separate contract with Harcourt Educational Measurement). Contact us for a complete list of what schools agree to do to become an America's Choice school. |
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| How does the America's Choice program help us respond to the requirements of the new federal No Child Left Behind Act? |
| In four ways. First, the America's Choice program helps students excel on the state and local exams that they must pass under the No Child Left Behind law. Second, our design offers invaluable assistance to schools that find themselve
s under-performing by the law's standards. Next, the Reading First provision of the new federal law encourages schools to use research-based reading programs that teach phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension—exactly the
same things that the America's Choice reading program has stressed for half a decade. Lastly, the new law promotes standards-based reform. The National Center on Education and the Economy, the parent organization of the America's Choice design, has been a
leader of the standards movement in education for a decade and the standards and exams that it has developed are widely considered to be among the best in the nation. |
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| Does the design help us do well on state and local tests? |
| Yes. External evaluations demonstrate that the America's Choice design is successful in raising student achievement on state and local accountability tests, as the outstanding results of the CPRE study of Rochester, Plainfield and Duv
al County suggest. To encourage strong student performance on state and local tests, we align our instruction to state standards. |
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| Can we continue to use local curricula and instructional materials if we adopt the America's Choice School Design? |
| Yes. Though America's Choice program has curricula of its own and is developing more, it also helps schools use their existing curricula and teaching materials more efficiently by aligning instruction to standards and assessments. |
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| How do K-8 schools implement the America's Choice design? |
| In most cases, K-8 schools are treated as elementary schools and implement the elementary program. If they wish to implement the middle school components, they must chose the middle school program and add-on to their contract in order
to cover any elementary components they wish to include. |
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